Nick Thomas-Symonds
Main Page: Nick Thomas-Symonds (Labour - Torfaen)Department Debates - View all Nick Thomas-Symonds's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered diabetes.
What a delight it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. C. S. Lewis, the great Christian writer, said:
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”
Every day, our constituents—people across Britain—are tested by the challenges that are the effects of diabetes, which is the fastest growing health crisis of our time. There is barely a family in Britain that has not been touched by it. As so many elderly ladies do, my late mother contracted type 2 diabetes when she reached her 70s. I spoke to colleagues from across the House in preparation for this debate, and many of them, including one this morning, said that they had a family member who had been affected by the disease.
In the last 20 years, the number of people in the UK living with diabetes has doubled, reaching 4.6 million. Every day, 700,000 people are dealing with the worst effects, and 700 people are newly diagnosed as suffering from some kind of diabetes. Amazingly, that is one person every two minutes, so this debate is not only necessary and apposite; rather, I would go one further and say that it is essential.
Sir John Hayes
I shall just finish the next exciting sentence and then I will happily give way. By 2025, there could be as many as 5 million people living with diabetes in the UK.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and congratulate him on securing this debate. The statistic for Wales is that one person in 14 is affected. Does he agree that, going forward, we must look at prevention—seeing the warning signs and looking at lifestyle changes—as well as having excellent treatment for those who are formally diagnosed?
Sir John Hayes
Absolutely. I will deal with that during my speech. Information that leads to a better understanding of risk, which in turn leads to prevention, is critical, particularly with respect to type 2 diabetes, which is the type that I mentioned earlier when I referred to my late mother.
I spoke of hundreds of thousands of people who suffer from type 1 diabetes—about 500,000 at the moment, but that could easily rise to 700,000—but of course 90% of sufferers are type 2 diabetics, and prevention is particularly critical in their case.